Hala shortly afterwards followed Falcutius to
the grave, having fallen sick with phthisis immediately after the trial.
Rigone, the President of the Court, lost his wife, and gave her burial
bereft of the usual decencies of the last rite, a thing which Cardan says
he could not have believed, had he not been assured of the same by the
testimony of many witnesses. It was reported too, that Rigone himself,
though a man of good reputation, was forced to feign death in order to
escape accusation on some charge or other. His only son had died shortly
before, so it might be said with reason that his house was as it were
thrown under an evil spell by the avenging Furies of the youth whom he had
sent to die in a dungeon. Again, within a few days the prosecutor himself,
Evangelista Seroni, the man who was the direct cause of his son-in-law's
death, was thrown into prison, and, having been deprived of his office of
debt collector, became a beggar. Moreover, the son whom he specially loved
was condemned to death in Sicily, and died on the gallows. Public and
private calamity fell upon the Duca di Sessa,[198] the Governor of Milan,
doubtless because he had allowed the law to take its course. Indeed every
person great or small who had been concerned in Gian Battista's
condemnation, was, by Cardan's showing, overtaken by grave misfortune.

Cardan still held his Professorship at Pavia, and in spite of the
difficulties and embarrassments of his position he went back to resume his
work of teaching a few days after the fatal issue of his son's trial and
condemnation. By the pathetic simplicity of its diction the following
extract gives a vivid and piteous picture of the utter desolation and
misery into which he was cast: it shows likewise that, after a lapse of
fifteen years, the memory of his shame and sorrow was yet green, and that
a powerful stimulus had been given to his superstitious fancies by the
events lately chronicled. "In the month of May, in the year MDLX, a time
when sleep had refused to come to me because of my grief for my son's
death: when I could get no relief from fasting nor from the flagellation I
inflicted upon my legs when I rode abroad, nor from the game of chess
which I then played with Ercole Visconti, a youth very dear to me, and
like myself troubled with sleeplessness, I prayed God to have pity upon
me, because I felt that I must needs die, or lose my wits, or at least
give up my work as Professor, unless I got so